Conventionally, animal proteins, vegetable proteins, starches and so forth have been employed in the manufacturing process for processed products of edible meats such as processed products of animal meats such as hamburg steaks, meatballs, shao-mai (shumai), dumplings and the like, or seafood processed products such as steamed fish pastes (kamaboko), fried fish pastes (age-kamaboko), steamed whipped fish pastes (hanpen), tubular fish meat (chikuwa), fish meat sausage and the like, for the purpose of depressing bouillon (drip) during heating, improving eating-texture and enhancing production yield.
In particular, egg white powder as animal proteins and powder soya bean protein, powder wheat protein and the like as vegetable proteins provide springy eating-texture and enhanced effects for preventing drip, and thus are generally employed.
However, these proteins contain their own unique flavor, which requires adding spices and seasonings in order to mask the flavor, causing a problem of reducing the original deliciousness of the edible meat. Also, these proteins are the allergen for food allergy, and thus it is required to label the use of such protein in the use thereof in recent years.
On the other hand, starches exhibit advantages of relative lower price, lower smells causing no allergy and the like, and thus are broadly utilized for enhancing the production yield of the edible meat products. However, an addition of an excess amount of the starch to the edible meat-processed product for obtaining higher improvement effect for the production yield adversely causes stickier eating-texture or soft eating-texture that is unique to the starches, possibly deteriorating springy and juicy eating-texture of the edible meat-processed products. For this reason, it is eagerly expected to present a new type of a starch, which can be added in the edible meat-processed products and can exhibit enhanced effect for preventing the drip during the heating without deteriorating the springiness and the juicy feel of the edible meat.
Meanwhile, the oil- or fat-processed starch is a starch obtainable by drying or heating a mixture after the preparation of such mixture by mixing a starch with an oil, a fat or an oil- or fat-related substance, and have been utilized through the ages for the purpose of improving the springiness of the seafood fish pastes, improving the productions yield of the edible meat-processed products and improving the eating-texture (Patent Documents 1 and 2).
Patent Document 1 (Japanese Patent Pre-Grant Publication No. S45-32,898 (1970)) describes a method for producing an oil- or fat-processed starch, in which an oil or fat is adsorbed to starch grains by contacting thereof, and after drying, is aged by presenting a heat source of 30 degrees C. to 150 degrees C. Patent Document 2 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. S54-11,247 (1979)) describes a method for producing an oil- or fat-processed starch by adding an oil or fat having iodine value of equal to or higher than 130 (equal to or higher than 125 for soya bean oil) to a starch at a ratio of 0.005 to 10% wt.